Although advertisements on the web pages may degrade your experience, our business certainly depends on them and we can only keep providing you high-quality research based articles as long as we can display ads on our pages.

To view this article, you can disable your ad blocker and refresh this page or simply login.

Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA) was in 13 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of the first quarter of 2013. ARNA investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with ARNA positions at the end of the previous quarter.

To the average investor, there are dozens of indicators shareholders can use to monitor publicly traded companies. Two of the best are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a superb margin (see just how much).

Just as beneficial, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the financial markets. There are lots of stimuli for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if you understand where to look (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, let’s take a glance at the key action regarding Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA).

What does the smart money think about Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA)?

Heading into Q2, a total of 13 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 18% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly.

Of the funds we track, Deerfield Management, managed by James E. Flynn, holds the most valuable position in Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA). Deerfield Management has a $43.9 million position in the stock, comprising 2.6% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell of Arrowstreet Capital, with a $7.7 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish include Daniel Gold’s QVT Financial, and Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital.

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, created the most valuable position in Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA). Arrowstreet Capital had 7.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital also initiated a $3.6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ARNA positions are Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management and Gabe Hoffman’s Accipiter Capital Management.

Insider trading activity in Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA)

Insider buying is best served when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time frame, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARNA). These stocks are Charles River Laboratories (NYSE:CRL), Synageva BioPharma Corp (NASDAQ:GEVA), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY), Viropharma Inc (NASDAQ:VPHM), and Questcor Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:QCOR). This group of stocks are in the biotechnology industry and their market caps match ARNA’s market cap.